TANKER RESPONSE: Northrop Grumman and EADS North America have jointly submitted their response to the U.S. Air Force's request for information (RFI) on the replacement for the aging KC-135 tanker aircraft, the companies announced June 9. The companies plan to offer the Air Force the KC-30, derived from the A330 passenger jet, which would be assembled and modified in Mobile, Ala. Rival Boeing plans to offer the service its KC-767.
Pentagon worries about the Chinese military buildup don't foretell a new Cold War-style arms race between the U.S. and China, according to a panel of Asia experts. The economies of the two nations are too intertwined to revert to the 20th century chess game of Soviet expansion and U.S. containment, speakers told a Heritage Foundation discussion of the Pentagon's latest report on People's Liberation Army expansion.
INTERIM CHIEF: L-3 Communications Corp.'s CFO will lead the company on an acting basis while it looks for a permanent successor to CEO Frank C. Lanza, who died unexpectedly on June 6. Michael T. Strianese will hold the dual positions of CFO and interim CEO while three board members lead a search for a new CEO. Strianese has been with L-3 since it was founded in 1997 and was promoted to CFO in early 2005 after co-founder and CFO Robert V. LaPenta left the company. As expected, L-3's board also appointed longtime director Robert B. Millard as its nonexecutive chairman.
Members of the House Science Committee expressed skepticism of the new plan for the scaled-back National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) during a hearing on Capitol Hill June 8, along with frustration over the Pentagon's failure to deliver detailed supporting documents to the committee on time.
A hefty review by the Congressional Budget Office of the U.S. Navy's 313-ship shipbuilding and force structure plan, which casts doubt on the service's surface and subsurface fleet proposals, also raises questions over the future of naval aircraft. The CBO report comes as Navy officials are examining their aircraft enterprise for cost savings and reductions to pay for shipbuilding and other Bush administration priorities, such as increased border security (DAILY, May 19).
Engineers reviewing the biggest aerodynamic change to the space shuttle since it began flying 25 years ago have cleared it for the STS-121 mission upcoming next month. A design certification review at the Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans, where the big shuttle external tank is manufactured, concluded that removal of the Protruberance Air Load (PAL) ramp will not subject the pressurization lines and cable trays it protected to excess aerodynamic loads.
Researchers analyzing gravity data collected by the U.S./German Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) spacecraft believe they have discovered the site of an ancient meteor impact that wiped out almost all life on Earth. Hidden beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet in the area south of Australia known as Wilkes Land, the 250-million-year-old crater measures 300 miles across, suggesting it was caused by a meteor as big as 30 miles wide.
IRAN RISING: The U.S. Navy's Littoral Combat Ship and its proposed slew of underwater unmanned vehicles could be useful platforms in a Persian Gulf engagement with Iran, analysts told the House Armed Services Committee. U.S. officials have long been wary of Iran's ability to plug up the Straight of Hormuz, they testified June 8. Still, such a move - stopping or slowing oil shipments - would also be economic "suicide" for Iran, making the likelihood questionable.
NASA is disputing numbers contained in the recent National Academies aeronautics decadal survey report that urges the agency to more evenly balance in-house aeronautics research with work farmed out to industry and academia. The National Research Council (NRC) report says that as of January, NASA "seemed intent" on allocating 93 percent of its aeronautics research funding for in-house use (DAILY, June 7). The National Research Council is part of the National Academies.
DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION: The Senate could take up its version of the fiscal 2007 defense authorization bill as early as June 9, and Armed Services leaders on both sides of Capitol Hill believe they can make a July 4 recess deadline for starting negotiations. Sen.
Whoever succeeds Frank C. Lanza as CEO of L-3 Communications will inherit a far-flung operation that will be difficult to manage, a co-founder of the company says. Robert V. LaPenta, who was instrumental in helping Lanza build L-3 into one of the defense and homeland security industry's most successful contractors, says that while L-3's loose integration of acquisitions encouraged entrepreneurial thinking, it also makes the company harder to run.
DICE-K CONFIRMED: Space Adventures announced June 7 that Japanese entrepreneur Daisuke "Dice-K" Enomoto has been confirmed to the Soyuz TMA-9 crew scheduled to launch to the International Space Station in September from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Enomoto will accompany Expedition 14 crewmembers Michael Lopez-Alegria and Mikhail Tyurin. The backup crew for the Soyuz TMA-9 mission includes Ansari X-Prize title sponsor Anousheh Ansari, who if required to fly would become the world's first female space tourist.
Researchers from NASA's Ames Research Center and the U.S. Forest Service have wrapped up a three-day demonstration the Fort Hunter Liggett Garrison near King City, Calif., in which small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were flown over controlled fires to demonstrate their ability to monitor wildfires.
Alan M. Foonberg and Diana M. Johnson have been named principal directors in the communications and networking division. Ranwa N. Haddad has been appointed principal director in the navigation division.
L-3 Communications Corp. chairman and chief executive Frank C. Lanza asserted shortly before his death that the company was poised to thrive without him and dismissed investor concerns about his refusal to designate an heir apparent as CEO. L-3 said that Lanza, 74, passed away on the evening of June 6. No cause was immediately announced, but the death was "sudden and unexpected," the company said.
A scientist and a former astronaut told a Senate panel June 6 that the medical consequences of long-duration space travel are not well understood and proposed cuts to NASA's life science budget will leave crucial questions unanswered as the agency tries to send people back to the moon and on to Mars. "Simply put, the biological risks associated with exploration-class spaceflight are far from being mitigated," said James Pawelczyk, associate professor of physiology and kinesiology at Pennsylvania State University.
